


Bro: The Glitter Pen

by spacepuck



Category: Homestuck
Genre: AU, Brainbent, Child Protective Services, Dysfunctional Family, Gen, trigger - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-21
Updated: 2012-01-21
Packaged: 2017-10-29 21:50:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/324547
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacepuck/pseuds/spacepuck
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bro knows better than Dave. There's almost no way they're going to get out of this situation this easy.</p><p>-</p><p>Small fic for the Homestuck AU <a href="http://brainbent.tumblr.com/">Brainbent</a>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Despite the fact that he was simply trying to be a dick to his younger brother with poor eyesight, Bro really did hate the pink glitter pen. It wasn’t because it was pink, or because it was sparkly, and basically gay in every single possible way imaginable. No, none of that was what bothered him. It was all part of his ironic ploy, and irony was key when communicating with Dave.

No. What pissed him off was how he had to get it. What situation he had to be in to ever need to own the stupid thing. That he was in jail and not at home. That he was far away from Dave and the only way of contact he had was to write letters on ridiculous pink paper with a stupid pink glitter gel pen that probably came out of some fat lard’s asshole.

Okay, yes, the pink paper and pen were optional, and they were completely his choosing, but there was reason behind his choice. He feared that if his sense of irony and loving dickishness toward his brother were lost in the only way he could contact him, Dave would assume something serious was going on. Like, bad serious. Something so serious that all normal programming would be cancelled for an important announcement. All sitcoms and reality shows and bad afternoon dramas cancelled for a speech delivered by the president himself. “Something pretty fucking bad is going on,” he’d say. “So now everything you see is serious.”

But that wouldn’t happen. Yeah, he had just written a letter to him about the hearing, and yes, that is serious, but doesn’t promote any sort of upcoming doom. They’ve known about this hearing for months now. Dave has never been in any sort of danger. They would be okay. They got this. They’re going to go home. He’s sure of it.

Well.

Well.

He wished he was completely sure. Fuck, sure, yes, there’s a ton of bad stuff presented that would count against their wishes, like the fact that Bro was hardly home and usually arrived back at odd hours in the morning either drunk or high, and the fact that the place is a complete mess and isn’t completely ideal for a child to grow up in – but even the cleanest of homes have fucked up kids, so _that_ didn’t help the case much – and just a bunch of other things that Child Protective Services deemed “unhealthy for a young boy to grow up with”.

Sure. Dave didn’t have the most spotless place to grow up in.

Sure. He didn’t always have someone around to watch him after the age of ten.

Yes, he’s been trained to fight since a young age with swords, but since when was being taught to stay on your toes and know how to fight such an awful crime?

And yes, Bro makes money in the porn industry. But it’s not like he’s a sick fuck that forces Dave to watch or, god fucking forbid, be included in it. He’s not a fucking pervert. Dave chooses not to see, so he doesn’t have to know what the hell goes on. He’s not affected. He’s not involved.

Except Child Protective Services thinks he is, and that it causes damage. And clearly, they’re above anything that Bro has to say about it.

But that didn’t mean that Bro cared for his little brother any less. He raised him when their parents died, he taught him how to fight and about self-defense, gave him rules to follow, made sure he stayed in school and did well, raised him so that he was capable of being on his own in the house. If any of that meant anything, that meant he wasn’t a complete fuck up as a caregiver, right?

Right?

He laid his face in his hands, an exhale slipping heavily between his lips. He felt so tired. An imaginary scenario of what will probably happen at the hearing runs through his head on loop constantly: he’ll walk into the courtroom, see Dave, Dave will leave, he’ll still be in big shit, he won’t go back home, he won’t see Dave for a long time.

He liked staying realistic. There was no point in believing so much in things that had a .0001% chance of happening. But god damn, did he wish that he could have some hope.

Dave, he knew, was so sure of himself that the hearing would go fine. Dave was just a kid – he always kept his mind on something that he wanted, and he was always piss sure that he would get it. And yeah, the kid’s dreams are met a lot of the time. He may not have shown a lot of emotion, but there was always a shift in attitude when he got what he wanted. A smug change in demeanor. An “I told you so” stance. Little things that said “fuck yeah, I win” without him actually speaking.

But this time.

This time, Bro wasn’t so sure that he would see any of that.

But he couldn’t let Dave know that he was having doubts. He had been having doubts since the beginning, but he had to hide it from the kid. There was no way in hell that he was going to crush his little brother’s hopes now. He was a pretty shitty guardian in lots of aspects, and he had confided in that with Dave already, but if there was one thing he was sure of how to do, it was how to keep his brother happy.

And if keeping Dave happy meant lying to him and giving him false hope, then that’s how it would be.

End of fucking story.

He sat alone in his cell, mind running over thoughts of the hearing and wondering how Dave was doing in the treatment center and if his problem was getting any better – he couldn’t believe he didn’t know about Dave’s dissociation deal until _after_ he was taken away, except of course he didn’t even know what the fuck dissociation was and what the warning signs were, and even if he did know the warning signs he wasn’t really around to notice and fuck, _fuck_ was he a really shitty guardian, he couldn’t even notice that Dave had issues, what a stupid fuck, _Bro_ , he thought, _you are a stupid stupid fuck, why couldn’t you be better._

As he thought these things, he was tapping the pink glitter pen that he hated so much against the metal sideboard of the bed at such a rapid tempo it sounded like a really bad leak in the pipes or a jackhammer going off far in the distance, or some shitty second-grade level simile that described just how furiously he was tapping the pen. He didn’t really notice until some fucks in the cells across and aside him complained about the noise and threatened to do blah blah whatever whatever to him, so he stopped without apology. It didn’t completely interrupt his train of thought, but only derailed it slightly so the carts squealed painfully against the tracks.

God, did he have a headache.

He set the pink pen down on the small beat-up table that was beside his bed, and the pen sat beside his slightly chipped shades and some other little trinkets that didn’t matter very much. The top of the tiny table, worn down from years of use and abuse, looked empty without the pack of cigarettes that usually sat there. But, as said before, he had traded the entire thing just to get the pen.

Fuck damn did he hate this stupid fucking pen.

He laid down on his bed and turned away from the contents of the table so he faced the boring grey wall. It had a number of scratches and cracks and Sharpie drawings on it from previous residents, but he couldn’t say the he himself confided in such doodling. It didn’t appeal to him, really. He would much rather slice and beat the crap out of things than draw pretty pictures of flowers and clouds and happy horseshit.

His eyes were sore from being awake. He felt so exhausted all the time from the stresses of the upcoming hearing and the constant wonder of his brother’s condition and the never-ending thought of how bad of a brother he was and that he would never see Dave again. It made him depressed as fuck. He wondered if _he_ was the one that was supposed to be in the mental nuthouse rather than Dave. But Dave was safe there, he knew. Safe from the horrors of being neglected and living in a shithole and having people to talk to rather than staying home alone and speaking to no one for hours on end.

It was depressing to think that Dave was in far better care of strangers than in the care of his own brother. That he was better off in some loony bin with people even crazier than he was, probably happier than he was than when he was home. He wished to be home again, Bro knew that pretty damn well, but would he even be happy? Would he get better, and feel better?

Bro brought his hands up to his face, closed his eyes, and made the first audible sound he had all day. He groaned softly. His heart ached quietly, and his muscles screamed at him to get up and do something, but he didn’t have the slightest idea of what to do. So he curled up a little more, rubbed slow circles into his brows and temples, and let the last of his thoughts slip out before forcing himself into sleep.

There was no way in hell that this hearing would go well.

There was no fucking hope for the Strider family.

Goodbye, good night, so long and fucking farewell.

And then he stopped his thoughts there, and he forced himself to sleep. He quelled the nagging thoughts that habitually crashed his system, and there was silence and darkness.


	2. Bro: Dream-Speak

There was darkness. There was sleep. There was no dreaming, because dreaming didn’t come to him. It sort of cemented his ideal state of reality, he supposed. He didn’t like to have hope in unhopeful situations and he liked straight facts and no bullshit. Which, he supposed, was a little ironic in itself since he thrived on telling people bullshit to fuck with them. But he hated being delivered bullshit, like on a silver platter with a little white folded over card inside that said, “This is bullshit!” in big, bulky orange letters.

He was a hypocrite. Fine. Hypocrisy never damaged anyone too bad, right?

Sleeping was the one time of the day where Bro literally didn’t have to think. He didn’t have to worry about the hearing, or Dave, or every little thing in between. His mind was blank, and it was wonderful. To not think about anything was wonderful, and he wished his mind could be so dark and so blank more often.

Of course, that really only happened to dead people. And being dead wouldn’t help in the case of the hearing. So he took what he had and stuck with the few hours of sleep a day that granted him the chance to revel in the quiet, blank darkness of his resting mind.

On occasion, there would be small moments of wispy scenes of light that would enter his dreams. Maybe a streak of red or a moving object or some odd thing that was rendered indescribable in the morning. These happenings were rare, and he didn’t really like them. When he remembered them by the time he woke up, it was another thing to think about on top of everything else. He didn’t want to wonder what the scene was or what the colors meant. He didn’t want to care. But he did, because secretly, he believed in the meanings behind dreams. It was such a sissy thing to believe in, and stupid, too, because dreams weren’t real and so the meaning behind them shouldn’t have been real. But he believed in them anyway.

When Dave was a little younger, when he would still talk about the weird dreams he would have, and when he was even smaller wake up and cry at night from oddball nightmares, Bro would listen to each and every one of them. They were stupid and fragmented most of the time, and he would always tell his brother that they were just dreams and didn’t mean anything, but he became curious of dream dictionaries. Again, stupid, he knew, but he wondered if it was bullshit that the brain makes up or something that had substance.

And a lot of it didn’t add up – not right away, anyway. Some dreams would show anxiety, some would show some variety of sadness or anger, and some wouldn’t have any clear definition at all – like some odd, blurred meaning that sat and resided in the smallest crevice of the boy’s brain to be subtly brought up in silly dreams. Most of these dreams were from when he was younger, like, under the age of nine, so they were little kid problems, he assumed. So Dave went on his merry way without knowing what his kiddie dreams meant, and Bro stored them in the depths of his mind so that he didn’t have to worry much about them.

The last time Dave had told Bro about a dream was almost two years ago, when he was fourteen. It was one of those odd mornings where they were awake at the same time and both in the house together while the sun was still out.

Dave had slunk his way into the kitchen, still careful about not tripping over anything but , and grabbed something from the pantry to eat for a late breakfast. It was Friday. A school day. He shouldn’t have been home, but some crazy virus had been spreading around the school and, with keen intellect and sharp guardian-ly wit, Bro suspected that he had caught it. Or just thought the kid needed a break and a floating virus was a good reason to stay home. Or some bullshit.

The kid flopped himself down onto the couch without knocking things away, only pushing off the dildo and puppets that his face had landed on, and seemed oblivious to Bro’s existence as the elder sat at the cluttered table, eating his late breakfast like a dignified fucking human being. But he, too, brought his cold pizza over to the couch and leaned his forearms against the back of it, looking down at his younger brother that munched slowly at some cereal.

“Yo,” Bro said, and Dave hardly reacted aside from a little glance over the shoulder. He said nothing, and instead kicked off a few items at his feet. Bro hit the back of his shoulder lightly with the back of his gloved hand. “You look like shit.”

Dave reached into the box and pulled out a handful of cereal. “Look better than you,” he muttered in reply, and shoved the food into his mouth. He didn’t have his shades on, which must have killed him because light was streaming into the room like a nuclear explosion was going on outside, but he didn’t move to shield his eyes. He squinted instead, and seemed a little less than content with it.

“Why the fuck are you home?” Bro asked, finishing off the slice in a few bites as he waited for a reply. Dave shrugged lightly.

“Sick, I guess.”

“You guess?”

“You only keep me home if there’s a virus or some deadly disease going around.”

“So, what? You sick?” Bro couldn’t tell by outside evidence, since Dave was forever pale and pressing a hand against his forehead never proved to be entirely useful, so he only went by grogginess and his brother’s word for a confirmation of sickness. Bad plan, but Dave knew that he’d kick his ass for skipping, so maybe slightly successful.

But Dave shrugged again. “I dunno. Not feeling too hot all up in here. I’m chill.”

Bro rolled his eyes and cracked a small half grin. “Faggot, you look like shit.” And then he undid the velcro of his glove and pressed the bare back of his hand against the side of the kid’s face, despite the fact that it usually didn’t bring any results, and pulled the hand away. Dave didn’t so much as flinch at the contact and instead continued to munch on cereal. “And you’re warm.”

“That never means anything,” he muttered in reply.

“I’ve got shit to do, man.”

Dave sighed and rubbed at an aching red eye, closing the other. “Nothing except for a fucked up dream, man. I’m fine.”

“Fucked up like the ones with the crows?”

“Nah. That’s some heavy duty fuckery there. This one was like a mediocre, B-rated slasher film.”

“And yet you’re still being a pussy about it.”

“Hey, maybe I’m sick and the fever’s just making me all delusional. Like, woah man, holy shit, I see the light, oh man Jesus I didn’t know you were actually a woman, can I grab your tits, O Savior?”

It took a while of diversion and digression to get the point of that matter – that is, Dave’s stupid dream rather than fictionalized female-Jesus having tits and fucking all the apostles under the table during The Last Supper – and by the end of the matter, Dave ended up going back to bed with sudden vomiting feelings churning in his stomach, and Bro took the moment to remember to look up blood, decapitation, burning, falling, and doves.

And that was the last time any dream-speak had come up between the two of them. Dave said nothing further about dreams, so Bro didn’t try to interpret them. Bro didn’t dream, so he had nothing to worry about. For a long time, he didn’t even think about the meaning behind dreams and the silly, un-realistic thought that they may mean something (which, as it turned out, wasn’t a stupid thought and he should have tried to act on it, maybe). The two continued on with the normal life – Dave either at school or at home or out doing who knows what, Bro out and doing his job and, ahem, more, not returning until the early hours of the morning.

It was normal to them, their lifestyle. Dave wasn’t such a little kid anymore – sure as hell not a damn adult, no, but Bro trusted him enough not to burn the house down or sell all of their belongings or run away. Bro brought in just enough money to keep the little apartment running, and just enough to raise Dave in a way that kept him alive. They didn’t have luxurious things or the greatest meals or the warmest home. They didn’t need it. They knew how to survive, because they were raised to face the hard, cold facts of life and stick near them. They had each other, even though they spent less and less time near each other, and that was enough to keep them going.

Of course, Child Protective Services deemed this lifestyle unlivable. So away Bro went, and away Dave went. They had to survive in a different way than normal now. Yes, it was possibly even safer now than it was before, with Dave surrounded by people to help him and Bro kept in line and surrounded by people to tell him what to do and what not to do.

And it was terrifying. Terrifying to know that your hard work of living life on the edge of the world was being carried away by boat and being taken back to the mainland. Back to the start, where you were babied and always kept a close eye on. No way to have a chance to fuck something up and try to fix it next time. There wouldn’t be a next time for Bro if he fucked up again. Once, and he’s done.

It made him feel constricted, binds made of slimy hands grabbing him back and words wrapping around and around, “No, don’t do that, you can’t do this, you fucked up, you can’t do that, get away, stay away”. It made him feel claustrophobic to know that the world was no longer at his fingertips. To know he couldn’t make a change, and that all these little things were holding him back and taking him away from a lifestyle he embraced.

He wondered if Dave felt the same way. Bound by the new lifestyle he was plummeted into and never wanted. Forced to be around people and situations he previously hadn’t prepared for. He wasn’t weak, Bro knew; the kid had a strong mind and was quick witted and had fast reflexes, but Bro could only wonder if that would save him from the feeling of being tugged away from what once was and inevitably falling into the panic of knowing that he would stay there for a while, in the soft safeties of the mainland where he wouldn’t be harmed. Away from the edge of the world where he could see the stars and the endless universe and just know that his life was what he could make of it.

This wasn’t a joke against Dave’s depth perceptions issues and his general shitty eyesight, but now that Bro thought of it, it was a little ironic to say.

And by thinking this, he knew he was awake again. Oh God, he wished so hard to not be awake. But he knew he was, because his mind was going a million miles a second and the light of the florescent bulbs was making the dark behind his eyes light. People grumbled and groaned and some fight had already begun far down the hallway.

Back to life.

Some bullshit life this fucking was.


	3. Bro: Use Pen

The night before the hearing, he didn’t sleep. He dressed in his flat grey suit and black shoes that constricted his feet, and that night, he could do nothing but sit on the edge of his bed and tap his foot steadily.

Click click click.

The quiet corridor echoed the taps, making the small noise even smaller as seconds passed.

Click click click.

Click click click…

He often had trouble with sleeping as it was, with a past of insomnia and general nights of staying up until the sun rose, with unnamed girls arms hooked around his shoulders or waist and often times a drink in hand. He didn’t like drinking, really—it acted more as a ploy to attract girls. Which was odd, because he found that alcohol had a bitter smell and an even worse taste, and he figured women liked sweet and fruity stuff.

Maybe he just attracted odd girls. Never stopped him from sleeping with them, anyway.

He ran his fingers through his hair more times than was healthy, feeling the dry strands tickle his skin as they began to stand a little on end. Sighing, he spit in his hands and rubbed the small pool of white bubbles around in his palms before smoothing his hair down again. He then steepled his fingers, rested his elbows on his knees, and hung his head. With closed eyes, he tried to keep his mind void of light and movement and contain only darkness and nothing.

He needed to sleep.

He needed to win this hopeless case.

—-

Bro Strider is not a crier. Like every other human being on the planet, he cried as a child, called for his mother when he had no knowledge of words, threw tantrums when he didn’t know the concept of the phrase “no”. But he grew up, just as everyone does, and since the age of three he has only cried once before.

Of course, that was when his parents died. Dave was only just born, maybe two months old, something like that. “There was nothing we could have done,” the doctors had said to him, a nineteen year old with his baby brother cradled in arm, silent in sleep and unknowing of the terror that had just occurred.

And like a child, he had cried and cried through the night, strings of snot dripping between his fingers and gasping sobs ringing about the near empty home. And when Dave would awake in tears in need of food or warmth, he would hold onto the baby and they would cry together, until finally the baby would stop with a filled stomach or enough comfort to last him the night, and Bro continued his cry for comfort on until he fell asleep from exhaustion.

Since then, he’s never cried. Not because he’s emotionless or “too tough for tears”, but because he’s never found a reason to. It was difficult raising his brother and keeping up his job to keep a home and feed for two, but it was nothing to cry over. He led a fairly simple life, making pornos and being out for all hours of the night, knowing that Dave was okay on his own because he had trained him to be. He trained him to fight and defend himself, to fight for himself, just in case something should happen. The kid knew not to eat poison or climb into the washing machine and not to set fire to the place—he wasn’t an idiot. He just watched TV and made shitty ironic comics and kept to himself.

Now, this wasn’t to say Bro didn’t care for Dave. If he didn’t care, he wouldn’t have taught him how to fight. He wouldn’t have bothered trying to feed him, or even bother coming home. Home wasn’t just a place to sleep and store food in and grab a change of clothes for the day. Home, to him, was where he needed to take care of the last important thing he had, and that involved coming home and making sure that the kid was okay.

Like a good guardian.

He was a good guardian. But Child Protective Services clearly didn’t believe so.

At the hearing, he had caught Dave’s eye only once. God, the kid looked like a wreck, and he couldn’t help but notice his slightly skewed tie and pained eyes. The lighting in the room wasn’t exactly kind to Bro’s eyes either, but it wasn’t unbearable. He gave his brother a small nod—a fraction of what he really wanted to do, which was hug the kid to death and get the hell out of there and go home — and he turned forward to face his fears.

—-

Since the age of three, Bro Strider has only cried twice in his entire life. Once when his parents died when he was nineteen. The second time, only recently.

He didn’t have much hope for the case as it was, particularly as it neared. He knew what Child Protective Services had against him, because he didn’t fit the one category they held above all families – “perfect”. He didn’t lead the cliché life of being a successful business man with a grandiose two-level home with a white picket fence and rocking chairs on the front porch that no one is ever seen sitting on, with little Dave running around the twenty-acre field in the back flying kites and playing with remote-control cars and helicopters while the nanny yells at him not to get grass stains on his new pink dress from Aunt Gertrude. That kind of stuff was bullshit. The families that lived in those places were always the ones that ended up on the Investigation Discovery channel for murders happening in the basement or the kids being locked in the kitchen closet for a week for missing a spot on the counter, or some other abusive freaky shit.

No, he and Dave lived better than that. Sure, their apartment was just on the outskirts of the inner-city and it was a small place that was hardly clean, with the carpet soaked with the smell of cigarettes and the twang of alcohol lingering in the stale air of the kitchen, but they were _happy_. They didn’t need a bleached-white home with acres of perfectly cut grass and a wooden mailbox with _Strider_ written on the side to prove it.

But that’s what CPS looks for. And he and Dave sat on the opposite end of the spectrum.

He felt like a baby, swiping dripping snot away from his nose with the back of his hand, thumb and forefinger pressing against an eye each to clog tears. He felt vulnerable, childish, crying in front of two security men in a boring business room where they waited for final things with the judge to be straightened away. He was a silent crier because he forced himself to be, but with containing his sobs, the energy went into his shoulders trembling.

For a moment, he wished he would just die.

And then, he felt violent. He wanted horribly to beat the shit of the judge with that stupid mallet, to give a firm _thwack_ to the head to each CPS member involved. Fire boiled in his veins, and his knee began to jump violently under the table as he thought about it. He was hurt so badly. Eye for an eye. Defenses.

But he knew he would be in even deeper shit for simply giving anyone in that room a little shove, so he slid his hands into his hair and bowed his head, breathing to the table.

Calm down, you stupid fuck.

Breathe.

Breathe.

There.

When he was told that it was time to go, he rose, and he knew that Dave was getting the news right about now. And he knew, somewhere in the back of his mind, a small squeak of paternal instinct, that the kid was crying.

There was nothing he could do to comfort him.

And that made him feel like the biggest asshole on the planet.

—-

The glitter pen was running out of ink.

He had about half a notepad left of pink paper, probably enough to last him another few months. But this would probably be his last letter adorned in sparkly letters addressed to Dave for a while, so he made sure to make it last.

 **_dear dave_ **

**_im so fucking sorry, little bro. im so fucking sorry that this didnt work. i bet you wanted to kick that judge dude right in the fucking throat, but w/e that wouldve gotten us in deeper shit and i know you dont need that kind of crap shoved down your throat now._ **

**_man, i miss you so fucking bad. this is already beginning to sound like a twelve year old crush letter. but i wish we could just go home and have things like they were. none of this fuckin bullshit. i promise things will be better when we go home, kiddo. i wont be such a fuckup this time._ **

**_i guess i will be starting those parenting classes or w/e they are soon. still a load of crap, but if it gets us closer to getting back home, ill go thru with it. we can do this little bro. just gotta wait a little longer._ **

The pen was starting to leave indents on the paper rather than ink. He sighed and shuffled around the drawer for the regular black pen, and began going over the last few words that hadn’t been marked in glitter.

He continued on with his letter with black ink, a hand in his hair, gripping lightly. He wasn’t in the mood to be ironic anyway. He was too tired. Too full of anger and upset.

 **_just remember that your always gonna be my little bro, even if worse comes to worse. keep your head up, get some fresh air, dont do that cutting shit to your arms you little punk. well be home soon. not as soon as we thought but were gonna get there, bro._ **

**_i love you man, no homo._ **

**_-ds_ **

He set the letter down and glanced over it, squinting at the scratchy pink ink. He tapped the pen against his leg gently before uncapping it again and adding a small note under his name. He underlined it thickly a few times for emphasis, then folded it and sealed it away. He had written the small post-script with such force that it indented the paper a little. He read it to himself with a glance before tucking the flap of the envelope in.

He set it in the drawer of his side table, and was whisked away shortly after for a meeting with the counselor.

He wouldn’t give up.

Never.

-

-

-

 _**PS – dont give up. ******_


End file.
